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Whew! Fifty-one posts -- all but three in just the last two weeks. Dateline Earth readers got to hear from an Arctic tribal elder, an Indian-turned-American nature photographer, Ethiopian political activists, native-rights campaigners from the Amazon and the grassy plains of Ecuador – as well as the European and American officials who dominate this country’s news diet.We stretched. The InvestigateWest team’s coverage of the global climate treaty negotiations that just wrapped up in Copenhagen was a mammoth undertaking for our small start-up news agency – but one that amply demonstrated the need for independent journalism. It was an effort worth every bleary-eyed late-night hour, every marathon Skype session, every up-before-December’s-dawn morning.

It’s unlikely InvestigateWest will be dashing off to a lot of international meetings. We were fortunate in this case to have the assistance of four able young journalists who raised the funds to get themselves to Denmark. Then they went on to deliver journalism that wasn’t available from many – and in a few cases, any – of the thousands of other journalists who covered the talks.

InvestigateWest photographer Christopher Crow is arrested for the second time. He was held for 10 hours. InvestigateWest photo by Mark Malijan.

They did this despite one team member being arrested and detained by Danish police – twice – simply for doing his job and covering civil unrest the talks spawned in Copenhagen’s streets.

They persevered. Alexander Kelly, his brother Blair Kelly, Christopher Crow and Mark Malijan – all in their 20s – slogged through two weeks that tired out even me, a veteran who’s covered plenty of environmental conferences and several riots, and who was sitting in the editor’s chair here in Seattle. I know: They worked their tails off.

I’m particularly proud that we were on top of the street protests, ours being a journalism studio based in Seattle, where the protest tactics on display in Copenhagen first hit the world stage with the World Trade Organization riots ten years ago this month.

We also brought home stories that seemingly went uncovered by others. I tried to keep up on Google News, which is not a surefire method, but I saw no other stories on native-rights activists' charges that an often-praised timber deal smacks of colonialism; or on how the lead negotiator for the African Union, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, stands accused of genocide. (Matter of fact, I was floored by the allegations against this supposed American ally in the war on terror. I tend to read the newspaper pretty thoroughly; why haven’t we heard more about this in the past?)

Being based in Seattle, we also made it a point to snag interviews with people from the Pacific Northwest. They included Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, both of whom have made their mark on this all-important push to rein in global warming.

And I helped a little by covering the release of a battery of scientific studies outlining the potential for sudden and cataclysmic climate change -- plus ideas on how to avoid it. The PR person for the scientists involved told me no one else had covered the studies.

Dateline Earth, one of three InvestigateWest blogs, will continue to place a heavy emphasis on covering climate change. Look for a post tomorrow advertising what we’ll have coming early in the new year.

Folks, if you’re read this far, it's plain that you can see the value of our work. Remember that it’s the time of year that non-profits come to you with their palms outstretched. InvestigateWest is no different. We’re a struggling start-up non-profit dedicated to preserving and modernizing investigative and other in-depth journalism on the environment, public health and social-justice issues in western North America. We’re putting particular emphasis on the Pacific NorthwestCascadia, where those issues resonate strongly.

Please support our work – financially, yes, for sure. You can donate here. Then, after you’re done with that, please tune in here on a regular basis. We want your ideas, your creativity, your energy. And we’re working on ways to involve citizen journalists in our work. So get in touch, particularly if you live in the West and would like to help. E-mail me at rmcclure (at) invw.org or Executive Director Rita Hibbard at rhibbard (at) invw.org.

We are looking to build a community around these issues and this special region. Please become a part of the InvestigateWest community.

I personally knew Professor Wagari Maathai, long before the world had fully acknowledged her struggles.

I was in university when she took on the Kanu Government for attempting to put up a 60-storey private building in Uhuru Park, the biggest public park. And even though matters environment had not engulfed my inner man, I was fascinated that an ‘ordinary soul’ had dared to go against the wishes of baba na mama (euphemism for the then mighty Kanu Party). Few of us at the University of Nairobi were dedicated to any cause. Although we would find immense excitement as we ganged up to stage riots over issues we thought were important, hardly did environmental issues in general or Wangari Maathai’s causes in particular, feature in our struggles.

Our lives’ journeys were to come to a confluence when I became an environmental reporter with The EastAfrican and later a columnist with Daily Nation. This wasin the early 2000s. Around the time, the regime of the former President Daniel Moi had stubbornly refused to see the sense in sparing the last of the country’s ecosystems. At the time, the ruling party’s intransigence had become legendary. And to crown its folly, the regime came up with one devious anti-environment scheme after another. If it was not the decimation of Karura forest, it was Ngong Forest, if not Ngong, it was Mount Kenya forests, Marmanet, Sirimoni, Kaptagat, Maasai Mau and so on ad nauseum.

With the departure next month of Executive Director and Editor Rita Hibbard, the InvestigateWest board is pleased to announce the Robert McClure, a co-founder as well as an award-winning environmental journalist, is succeeding Hibbard as acting Executive Director.

At the same time, Carol Smith, a co-founder and acclaimed social issues and health journalist, is moving into the role of acting Executive Editor.

“Robert will guide a growing, stable and exciting news organization into its next phase,” said Hibbard, who is leaving to pursue other projects long put on hold by the demands of a thriving nonprofit newsroom. “As a co-founder, he profoundly understands the importance of what we do, and is in a great position to push it forward.”

InvestigateWest is an independent, nonprofit investigative news organization founded in 2009 and based in Seattle. It is staffed by journalists with a track record of producing in-depth stories that produce change in public policy and practice. It has received funding from both national and regional foundations.

InvestigateWest’s work resulted in three laws passed by the state Legislature in 2011, including two establishing worker safety and health rules after the publication of a story linking exposure of chemotherapy drugs to illness and death among health care workers, and another banning carcinogenic pavement sealant after InvestigateWest wrote about their widespread use.

“Carol also will bring her investigative and narrative skills to the fore in her new role,” said Hibbard, who has been at the helm since InvestigateWest’s launch. “She’s a wonderful writer and journalist who will contribute hugely to the new organizational structure.”

In what its authors admit is almost certainly an underestimate, a new study says the catastrophic climate changes coming to the Arctic will cost at least $2.4 trillion by mid-century. (To put that into perspective, President Obama just proposed a $3.8 trillion federal government budget for next year.)
The true cost is likely to be a whole lot more -- probably in the range of the combined gross domestic products of Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom, says the report, which was financed by the Pew Environment Group.
A melting Arctic heats the climate in two basic ways: First, when all the white snow and ice on the land and in the ocean melts, the darker colors underneath absorb more heat instead of reflecting it.
The second thing that happens is that as the permafrost melts, it releases methane -- remember methane, that other greenhouse gas, the one we fingered not long ago for its powerful greenhouse punch?
The researchers came up with estimates of how much both of these effects will have and converted those numbers into carbon dioxide equivalents -- i.e., how much of that better-known greenhouse you'd have to release to create this much climate warming.
Those figures are sobering: The amount of warming to be wrought this year alone by Arctic melting will equal about 42 percent of all the emissions from the United States! That's the equivalent of building 500 new coal-burning power plants.

Yahoo! We just received word that Alexander Kelly, InvestigateWest's correspondent at the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks, won first place in the online news category for universities in the annual contest of the Society of Professsional Journalists, Northwest region.

It brings back the bleary-eyed December nights Alex and I worked from different sides of the Atlantic -- not to mention tireless toil by videographer Blair Kelly and photographers Mark Malijan and Christopher Crow. It was exhausting! We weren't doing it for a prize, but it sure feels good for Alex to win one.

It was the second award for InvestigateWest coming out of the climate summit. Malijan also won a National Press Photographers Association prize for the excellent photos he shot in Copenhagen. (In another Copenhagen update, Crow has produced an audio piece on the conference. It runs over 30 minutes, which might help explain why I haven't been able to download it and listen to it yet. If it gets posted on the web, I'll let people know.)

By Alexander Kelly and Blair Kelly
COPENHAGEN -- In this, the third and shortest of our video interviews with Ethiopians who traveled to Denmark to protest against their prime minister, Meles Zenawi, a demonstrator hints that climatic conditions are a factor in the unrest in his homeland, the Ethiopian region of Ogaden:

Yahoo! We just received word that Alexander Kelly, InvestigateWest's correspondent at the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks, won first place in the online news category for universities in the annual contest of the Society of Professsional Journalists, Northwest region.

It brings back the bleary-eyed December nights Alex and I worked from different sides of the Atlantic -- not to mention tireless toil by videographer Blair Kelly and photographers Mark Malijan and Christopher Crow. It was exhausting! We weren't doing it for a prize, but it sure feels good for Alex to win one.

It was the second award for InvestigateWest coming out of the climate summit. Malijan also won a National Press Photographers Association prize for the excellent photos he shot in Copenhagen. (In another Copenhagen update, Crow has produced an audio piece on the conference. It runs over 30 minutes, which might help explain why I haven't been able to download it and listen to it yet. If it gets posted on the web, I'll let people know.)

One thought on “InvestigateWest Copenhagen climate-treaty coverage points up need for independent journalism”

@ Mr. McClure (nicely written!) – The 4 young men did remarkable reporting, just as you say, and among other things I’d like to see their personal views of what they experienced and observed posted here – and I hope, for all of our sakes, they continue working with IW and keep you up many more nights.

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